Bad Hair Day Collage and Festive Friday Giveaway

It's another Festive Friday here and another giveaway! The winner of last week's giveaway of the matchbox keepsake box is Carmen. Well done - I will send your prize as soon as possible.

Now, another one for the Left of Center challenge blog now, using the Sadness Walls stamp from Ike's Art. Now, this stamp is fabulous as it is, but especially versatile for the unadorned face. I so wanted to do something art journally with it, but sadly my painting mojo is nowhere to be found this week. However, there is always collage.

No step by step photos this time but I just printed out the face on watercolour paper, fixed the ink with oil pastel fixative spray and coloured with distress inks and a waterbrush (my favourite way) and cut out just the face part. Then out came a handbag sized Marie Claire and I just started placing the head over various pics and cutting out the ones I liked. I decided that she was already having a bad hair day (as she had none!) so it's called it's going to be a bad hair day. Stick the whole lot together with Mod Podge (although be careful as too much will cause the ink on the magazine pages to smear), clean the Mod Podge off your hands, the table and the cat, then you're done. I mounted mine onto a piece of corrugated card which I inked a bit to finish it off. Collage is great if you're not good at drawing, and you can still get creative. Her necklace for example is the roof from a stadium picture! So find a magazine and have fun cutting it up!

Now, my plan was to make a cover for a sketchbook I have from this, but I have misplaced the sketchbook! Still, if I don't find it tomorrow I will get another and add this as the cover and that will be the giveaway. Just leave a comment here or on our facebook group before 12 midnight (GMT) on Wednesday 10 December and I'll pick a winner at random to be announced next Festive Friday.

Until next time have fun and be happy.

Bex

29. Colourful Creepy Collage and Wicked Wednesday Giveaway

Giveaway details at the end for impatient ones!

Well, Halloween is nearly upon us, so I thought I would do something that is quick and easy to knock up for when you need that last minute Halloween card, present, or bit of decor. Same technique also works for Christmas too - do I lose points for mentioning the C word already?!

First of all, you need to cut some paper. I used scrap watercolour paper for mine, but it would also work with leftover patterned paper, just with a different result.

I cut mine into inchies (1" square), twinchies (2" square) and rectangles of 1" x 2". 1" x 3" and 2" x 3" as I found these worked best for me. Now, sadly I don't have nearly enough Halloween stamps, but I used what I had and just stamped in black Versafine and inked the edges with the same. I then coloured them with a variety of distress inks and a water brush. Simples. I also did a few shapes just adding googly eyes (yup, still trying to use my stash of those) and highlighted bits with a gel pen.

Now, these shapes should all fit together into a kind of Halloween collage which makes quick and easy cards as you can see.

Apologies for the photos, for some reason when I crop some of my more colourful pics then they just don't work.

I also added some to an 8" square canvas for a bit of home decor. Since this had a sturdier substrate than the card I could add some other elements, such as little charms, glass bottles and my last doll arm left over from the zombie door.

Finally, those 1" x 2" pieces are perfect domino size. Glue one onto a domino, add some glossy accents, and use the same glossy accents to add a bail onto the back, and you have a pretty quick Halloween gift.

So there you go - a few bits of scrap paper, a bit of stamping and colouring, and you have a world of possibilities. If you don't want to bother with the stamping, you could even try the same thing with leftover scraps of patterned paper. The world is your lobster!

And finally, the giveaway. Leave a comment, here or on our facebook group, before midnight GMT on Saturday 1 November to be in with a chance of winning a set of canvas, card and domino pendant. I have TWO sets to give away. Winners will be announced sometime on Sunday 2 November when I've had enough coffee to sort them out! Good luck, and thanks for looking.

I have entered this into the Sisterhood of Snarky Stampers challenge for pink Halloween for the card, the Artistc Inspirations Challenge for spookyand the Left of Center Challenge for Halloween.

Tune in tomorrow to see Jas's last Halloween project.

Bex